Template for Success

One of the things that stuck in my brain from the management courses I took many years ago is the usefulness of ‘programmed decisions’. These are routine things in life you don’t have to think about each time but can just go ahead and do. They save time and mental effort. Templates for MS Word – once created – fall within this category. There is no need to recreate the wheel every time you start a story. 

If you write fiction, you can likely get away with using the standard MS Word styles. You’ll only need a few of them. BUT! These styles will mutate depending on what you copy and paste, what others using your computer do, and so forth. Having your own styles means greater stability in what you see. And, if you use a program like Atticus which requires MS Word heading styles to create the chapters and TOC, it takes 2-seconds to change your heading styles to what the program asks for.  

.… Create custom styles, if desired (highly recommended for non-fiction!)
…. Create the layout 
…. Save as a custom template

Note that if you are going the traditional print route, your publisher will let you know what they want in the manuscript. 

Remember, you can set your template up with more than you might need and simply delete the extra later. Or, you can create another template just to hold the extras, keeping your working manuscript lean, and then copy over the other content later.

NOT in your template:
… Cover – this is a separate process!

IN your template for self publishing:
…. Inside cover (aka title page) with title, author name(s), publisher
…. Copyright page, catalogue number
…. Dedication and acknowledgements (can be separated; may not be used)
…. Foreword, map(s), other stuff as needed
…. About the author
.… Appendices – for fiction, this could include a glossary, excerpt from another book, book club guidelines/questions, etc.

I don’t include the table of contents here as it is generated automatically when creating an ebook, and usually isn’t needed for a fiction print book. Add it if you want it! In MS Word, it’s generated using heading styles.

Need something to fill these sections until you’re ready to use them? https://www.lipsum.com/feed/html

Note that dedicated book layout programs like Atticus may handle all front matter and back matter separately, and adds the table of contents automatically. When writing, don’t worry about it. If you need to later, Just copy and paste the extras into a new document. 

Styles

A virgin MS Word file already uses a document temple and comes complete with a full range of styles, including the ubiquitous ‘Normal’. We aren’t going to use any of them. Why? Because MS Word changes them at the drop of a hat.
Creating and applying custom styles is easy. For fiction, you need five or six styles and that’s it – and that includes styles for the one-off stuff on the inside cover and copyright page, and for your headers and footers. Once your template is set up with dummy text for those things, you’ll use fewer styles as you write.

~~~~ How do you create a body text style? ~~~~

In the Home tab, click on the little arrow at the lower right-hand corner of the Styles area. This opens up a floating pane with a list of the most commonly used styles the document has. The style assigned to the paragraph you’re working on will be highlighted.

The left-hand icon at the bottom of the styles pane lets you create a new style. Click on it.
– Give it a name (suggestions below)
– Style type: paragraph
– Based on: (no style) Why? Because if it’s based on a style and that style is changed, so will your style.
– Style for following paragraph: for body text, usually the same style or for a first paragraph in chapter style, choose your regular body text.
– In the middle of the style attributes window, you can choose the most common features of the style, such as font and size. At the bottom left, a drop-down box ‘Format’ lets you drill into the particulars of the style, most often ‘font’ and ‘paragraph’.

Special tip: specifying leading lets you change the amount of space that shows between lines within a paragraph. This will be important if you create your own print version of the book. Leading impacts not only the style, but readability.

~~~~ How do you create a heading style? ~~~~

Same as the above, but with one critical addition. In the style attributes window, click on “Format’ at the bottom left and select ‘paragraph’. In the first tab ‘Indents and Spacing’ in Outline level, select Level 1 and work your way down for subsequent headings. Heading 1 is the top level heading – use it for Sections or Chapters.

~~~~ How do you modify a style? ~~~~

In the Styles pane, right-button click on the style you want to modify and from the list that appears, select Modify. You will then have the same choices you had when you created the style. Use the drop-down box ‘Format’ at the bottom to look at both ‘font’ and ‘paragraph’ characteristics.

If you aren’t seeing these things in the styles pane, someone else likely messed with your program. Click on the options link at the bottom right of the pane. Check ‘paragraph level formatting’ and ‘font formatting’. Your list of styles in the style pane will likely grow.

Now it’s Your Turn

There are two basic parts to your manuscript: headings and body text.
Your headings are what organize your book so that MS Word can nest the content – the headings are also what the program uses to automatically generate and update your table of content. This is especially important for ebooks. Your body text is what you’ll be spending your hundreds and thousands of hours creating, and your audience a few hours reading.

Work along with me here and create some styles of your own. Note how I’ve named the styles. The ‘aa’ is to put them at the top of your styles window. The ‘a’, ‘b’, and ‘c’ is so the styles used most often are at the top. Do what works for you.

Body Text Styles

This is the one you’ll be changing at will as you go from writing to publishing. Set the characteristics of each style to what works for now, and easily update it as needed.
– Sample style names: aaaBTindent; aaaBTfirstline; aaaBTspecial; aaaBTopeningquote, aaaBTspacer, etc
– Font characteristics: whatever you want, whatever makes it easy.
– Paragraph characteristics: Outline level set to ‘body text’ (the default), line spacing to ‘single’ or choose an exact number (leading), indentation > special > first line as desired (you’ll want to play with this).
– Shortcut Key: suggest a key combination you can use your non-dominant hand for so your other hand can be using the mouse. I like Alt-A. If the short cut has been assigned to something else, decide if you still want to use it, or select another combination.

Heading Styles

Usually big, sometimes distinctive. Often, they start a new page and have loads of space under them. Yes, adding a page break before is a paragraph style attribute that you can add. All your heading styles show in the Navigation pane.
– Suggested style names: aabSection; aabChapter; aabSubChapter. aabPOV
– Font characteristics: Increased size, bold, distinct font
– Paragraph characteristics: Outline level set to 1 or 2 or 3, depending on the depth of the hierarchy you need. In the styles attributes window, click on the ‘Format’ button and choose Paragraph. Go to Indents and Spacing and set the Outline level. Also add spaces before / after as desired, and my favorite, in the other tab choose page break before. If you’re going with Kindle, it won’t actually get used like that, but I just like it while I’m working.

While writing, you may want to include a heading style that lists the POV character(s) and/or location or other information you find useful. Having these show up in the Navigation pane can help you get around the manuscript more quickly and give you a valuable overview. And when cleaning up the manuscript for publication? Select that style in the Style pane, right button click and choose ‘select all _ instances’ and hit the delete key. Ouch. Yeah, save a copy names something like ‘book with all my notes.docx before you do that!

Header & Footers Styles & Title Page Styles &…

Using the same steps as above, decide on your headers and footers (or just the one) and what the text on your Title page should look like. The copyright and other information can have their own style or can use your body text style.
– Suggested style names: aacTITLE; aacHeader, aacFooter, aacCopyright, etc

Fun tip here. There is loads of information already contained in your document – you can use this by inserting fields and your headers and footers are the place you’ll use these most often.

Create and Save Your Template

Once your styles are done and you’ve added any headers and footers you want, build out the file with all those things you likely won’t be needing for a while, like inside title page, table of content, author information page, copyright, etc. Separate them with section and page breaks, NOT extra paragraph breaks. 

Note: Except for the heading, don’t add extra text to your TOC. This is something you’ll automatically populate based on your heading styles, most often just the section and chapter styles. There are loads of youtube videos on how to add and edit TOCs.

When everything looks good, save the file as a template. File > Save As. Choose .dotx, and for the directory, let the program recommend the folder, which will be the template folder for MS Word, NOT your working folder. You want your template to show up in the list of MS Word templates under “Personal”. Or keep your templates where you want them!

Test it: Go ‘File > New’ and select your new template from the list under “Personal”. In the new file will be all the sections you just created, waiting for you to add your writing. Easy peasy.

Although it is possible to apply your template to an existing document, it is much much simpler to create a new file and copy over to it.

A bit of voodoo: before copying, create lots of empty paragraphs at the end of your manuscript and then avoid them when copying it over. Avoid them like the plague. MS Word sticks a lot of information in the last paragraph mark – if there is any trace of corruption in the file, chances are it’s there. Unless you use automatic bullets and especially numbers. Avoid those like the plague AND the zombie apocalypse.

NOW, make sure your view shows all the formatting marks AND you have your navigation pane open! Have your style pane open as needed… which if you’ve made keyboard shortcuts, won’t be often.

Remember that if you edit a style or add a new one, choose ‘New documents based on this template’ in the modify style window.